Part 1 of my Furtherfield case study chapter - Brit Art, Situationism, Fluxus...
This is Draft 2.5 of the first quarter of one of my 3 case study chapters, on the London-based Furtherfield art group.
Some weeks ago I posted a quarter of another of my case studies, the Hong Kong In-Media citizen journalism project.
It seems i can only work in quarter chapters - perhaps this is like semi-tones in music....
Anyway, most of this part of the chapter says very little about furtherfield, and quite a lot about Brit Art. This is partly because I am not doing a separate chapter as literature review, so all of my background stuff needs to be woven through the relvant chapters.
I have written the first draft of the other 3 sections in this chapter, but i dont have time to redraft them now -- so i will not post them here yet. Theymight make it here in August or September.
Next week i have to start redrafting in a major way the chapter on my 3rd case study, the Container project in Jamaica. this is quite daunting as I have not looked at the chapter for over a year, and I know it is a real mess. i got too sidetracked with histories of slavery and rasta. If I keep to my self-imposed schedule I only have 2 weeks to write new stuff for it, and rewrite what I already have.
Scary!
I hope everyone is making better progress than me - last week i wasted 3 days writing an abstract for a conference that luckily got rejected.
I sleep badly, waking every few hours...and acupuncture is not helping much ... the only thing that will help is to finish this beast I suspect. So that is another 5 months and 2 weeks of arse to the grindstone...
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thanks for your comments on my draft chapter section!
Hi Clemens
I have just logged in to the next layer after a few months absence due to sad real-world situation which pushed my thesis and every other part of life to one side.
i appreciate you taking the time to read the first section of my paper on Furtherfield, and your comments. I am currently reworking the whole of this chapter so I will take your thoughts on board ..they are quite timely in fact :-).
the style stuff is so hard... i can find a reasonable tone in shorter papers..but the thesis is a bit schizo... pompous then overly clammy like a sleazy neighbour!
I do know of public netbase and met konrad and marie quite a few times in the mid 90s...and recall the nikeground project...i didnt know the situationism connection...so that is a good tip..thanks!
and yes please..i wd love to read your paper on these projects.. so pls upload
i might post parts 2 and 3 of my furtherfield chapter soon...right now i am finishing off part 4...
cheers
and hope all your stuff is going well
doll
Comments on Furtherfield-Chapter
dear doll_yoko!
i'm back from hollidays and just finished reading your paper. right at the outset: this is really a fine piece of work, so that there isn't much to comment on it. nevertheless i'll try to make some small remarks, which came to my mind:
first, the question of style. i totally agree to your statement that we should try remain authentic to our own voices. but i also think that there is some intrinsic function of academic writing, so to say the attempt to receive the difference to our own "material". i know, it sounds awful, but it definitively helps to preserve some kind of analytical view. so when you introduce your "material" (in particular the interviews mentioned on p.5), the style - for me - is a bit to familiar. but that's just my opinion.
second, situationism: also a nice chapter and fine to read. but though you are using original citations in the fluxus-chapter, i couldn't find some "primary sources" concerning situationism. i'm a big fan of sadie plant and her book about the situationist international is probably one of the best, but for the balance of the text i would also quote some original citation (like you did with george brecht for example).
third, the influence of situationism: you mentioned groups like etoy and uebermorgen, but imho the most important austrian player is missing (yes, armin already knows what i'll say): public netbase which really tried to continue some of the basic ideas in their projects (for example: nikeground or s-77ccr). i'll present a paper at the beginning of september in luzern dealing with some of these projects. if you want to, i can upload the text when i finished it.
that's it! i really appreciated reading your text and you set me thinking concerning the conclusion of situationism as culture hacking and fluxus as sharing, of which hopefully more later!
best regards!
clemens
sandalwood undulations
Thanks for relaxation suggestion armin, and for future telepathic relax country waves
i am doing some self-study of ayurveda, and today spent about 15 minutes making a mini-massage of study-weary limbs using organic cocunut oil and essential oil of australian sandalwood .. it seems like it cd be a good way to approach the body-losing dimensions of study, and i will try to make it part of a daily routine
it is good you got onto your RSI early - too much typing put me out of action for about 6 months once
have a wonderful country break, and will wrap the intermedia sandwich in foil so it should still be fresh upon your return
i think that possibly one problem that many of us on this list share is that because we are coming from art/writing backgrounds we set high standards for our actual writing, that we expect it to be as good as our favourite artworks or texts that we have made outside the world of study, and this places an extra stress on us that perhaps other thesis students do not suffer as intensely.... i am unhappy when i cannot sense any poetry in my academic writing, and i think once or maybe more than once before some of you have encouraged me/us to try to remain authentic to our own voices and not fall into the trap of mimicing the worst of dry, verbose academic writing
at the moment in the next section of my furtherfield redraft i am trying to be at least conversational in tone...which seems like a good starting point...
over and out for the next few days...
doll
relax waves
dear
i can see you have been working very hadr, I felt it even before you were posting the text. I have also been working very hard, but not on the PhD. have been making some radio programmes to earn money, one on collaboration, one on futurism. it was all very intense, interesting work but also quite exhaustiung and it really didnt leave any space for TNL postings which madkes me sad. now that that is done I can switch back to PhD but not before a short holiday on countryside, probably without internet. so i hope the site keeps working while i am away. when back I am really looking forward to reading your text which sounds like a very tasty omelett with intermedia layers and fluxus jam, so I think you should also grant yourself some relaxation time, as productivity does go down at some point if one continuously tries to work. I already had some signs of RSI on the last days of radio work, but now better since had 2 more easy going days. thus, hope to be sending some relaxing waves, more on work itself after return
armin